D-day veterans at the service of remembrance at Bayeux War Cemetery in Normandy on Saturday.
Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Around 150 British veterans have gathered in Normandy to commemorate the D-day landings of 6 June 1944.

Former services personnel, now in their late 80s and 90s, crossed the Channel to return to the beaches, cemeteries and villages of northern France.

Former troops attended a Royal British Legion-organised service at Bayeux cathedral on Saturday, where they were told by the Rev Patrick Irwin, the Royal British Legion chaplain to Normandy: “Your historic achievements will remain as one of the defining moments in the history of the last century.”

Some 156,000 allied troops landed on the five invasion beaches on 6 June 1944, in an operation prime minister Winston Churchill described as: “Undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place.”

Neville Foot from Bury, Lancashire, at the grave of a comrade from the Scottish Horse Regiment at Bayeux war cemetery. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

It marked the beginning of an 80-day campaign to liberate Normandy that involved 3 million troops and cost the lives of 250,000 people.

Irwin called for their sacrifices to continue to be remembered, adding: “It’s for successive generations not to betray this trust.”

Inside the cathedral was British D-day veteran Victor Mackenzie, 91, who was aged 20 when he served with the Royal Army Service Corps on D-day.

As the bells tolled after the service, Mackenzie, of North Weald, Essex, said: “It’s always very emotive, it really is. You have to think of those who never came back. It’s with you every day. It’s one of those things.

“Coming back to the cathedral brings back so many memories.”

Outside the cathedral, Bob Gamble OBE of the Royal British Legion, said: “For a lot of veterans who came, it was one of the key moments in their lives. They come back and meet people who they often haven’t met since 71 years ago.”

In the past few days, many veterans visited the five allied landing beaches – codenamed Juno, Gold, Sword, Omaha and Utah – set across a 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline.

It was there that many thousands of troops came ashore and helped turn the tide of war into an eventual victory against Hitler’s Germany.

Services were held at memorials and cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), including at Jerusalem cemetery – the smallest military cemetery in Normandy.

He died aged 90 on 30 December 2014, six months after slipping out of his care home in Hove, East Sussex, to travel to Normandy for the D-day commemorations that year.

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Jordan was offered free crossings to D-day events for the rest of his life by a ferry company after he made international headlines. His wife of 59 years, Irene, died seven days after him, aged 88.

At a service on Friday at Colleville-Montgomery, yards from Sword beach, the local mayor, Frédéric Loinard, spoke of the gratitude of the French for the role the allies played in defeating Nazi Germany.

Norwich and District Normandy Veterans Association member Len Fox, 90, told of the sheer horror he and his young comrades endured 71 years ago.

He said: “As a 19-year-old, I had never left home. It was very scary because we didn’t know whether we were going to see our parents the next day, or even if we were going to survive D-day.

“I was one of the lucky ones. I regard the lads who are buried in the cemeteries, they are the real heroes. We just had a job to do.”